This interactive page allows those who held St. Mary of Magdala celebrations to share their experiences.
Please take a moment to write a brief account of your group’s celebration, using the comment form below. You can also upload photos with your story — make sure to scroll below the “Post Comment” button. We ask that you resize images to be 1024×768 or smaller. Please remember to include your the location of your celebration.
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The St. Mary of Magdala celebration hosted by CTA Metro Detroit was called “Faithful to the Core” and focused on the women at the foot of the cross.
The Vancouver Catholic Worker’s Samaritan House had a small house ceremony using the Guided Imagery Celebration provided by FutureChurch.
Our Mary Magdalene celebration was especially nice and the PowerPoint presentation of Women Leaders in Early Christianity was a big hit.
Each year we present a Mary Magdalene
Award to a person who is working for renewal in the Church , is active in
many ministries of service, and very supportive of women taking active roles
of leadership, This year’s recipient was Ed Simons, a longtime CTA member,
formerly a member of the active ordained clergy, a tireless worker in prison
and other ministries, and an associate of the Sisters of Charity of
Leavenworth. He was totally surprised and pleased by the honor.
150 people! Awesome! What a wonderful idea to tie in the Magdala celebration with the “Women and Spirit” exhibit! Well done!
Wow! Great job! I appreciate all the effort you obviously put into each details.
A few photos from our celebration.
Barbara Ballenger of State College, PA, shared a bit about her parish’s celebration in her blog. Enjoy her original work, “Magdalena’s Song,” while you’re reading.
http://mamasmansion.wordpress.com/
We came together to celebrate Marya Magdelen’s Feast, July 22. The celebration was a great success. The people I had invited from the outside for the performance of Rey der Vrouwen told me they were moved by this ‘procession of great women in the church from Mary Magdalen onwards through the centuries until the present day.
Mary M. herself spoke first, then St. Paul, quoting the little bits from his letters that paid homage to women leaders. Then we had the ‘litany’ and after each chanted invocation the chanted reply: intercede for us. Then the mention of great people still among us. (One of them in one of our other communities, a former missionary in Indonesia died right after our word- and communion service.)
Finally Mary Magdalen spoke again and told the women present that all their own pastoral or friendly gestures/words were holy laying on of hands. We sang a song that the faithful in the country love: The desert will bloom…
These photos are from the Mary Magdalene celebration held at the Church of the Epiphany in Louisville, KY on Wed., July 21, 2010.
About 75-80 people attended (seen in one of the photos). Our homilist for the evening was Sharon Bidwell, whose topic was “Prophetic Voices”.
Call to Action Alaska sponsored a celebration for the
feast of St. Mary of Magdala. Father Pat Bergquist said Mass at St. Raphael’s in Fairbanks, and we all gathered around the altar to be active participants. The homily contained contributions by members
speaking in the voices of women active in spreading the gospels in the early church. At the end of the service we gathered around a font and, using the holy water, blessed each other to “go forth” and continue in the spirit of Jesus’ message.
Afterwards most of us lingered to talk freely with each other about our local conditions and to enjoy our comraderie.
The celebration in Essex, MA, was organized by the group Women of the Well.
Here are pictures from our liturgy.
What a beautiful group of 23 attended, so very responsive and the singing was as good as any choir!
Dena is a perfect example of why women should be ordained. Her homily will be on our website http://www.cta-swfla.org
Eighty people gathered at the Mary Magdalene Celebration, in Albany, NY organized by the local Call To Action chapter.
An excellent opinion piece that ran in The Times Union of Albany, New York:
http://www.timesunion.com/opinion/article/Include-women-in-priestly-ministry-599042.php
A group of about 25 people, including several women priests, several husbands and other supporters of the movement, met in Estero on July 22, the feast day of Mary Magdalene, the first person to see the risen Christ. They call her the apostle to the apostles.
To read an article in the The Palm Beach News Post:
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/on-the-west-coast-of-florida-a-small-834535.html?page=2&viewAsSinglePage=true
I’d be interested in reading the text of Marilyn Kloos’s presentation, if it’s available.
Nineteen co-sponsors hosted the St. Mary of Magdala celebration in Cincinnati, Ohio, held at the Sisters of Charity Motherhouse.
Our reflector was Marilyn Kloos, sc. She was spectacular.
Blessed Sacrament Parish, Midland MI
We announced our event in 6 Catholic parish bulletins and 4 Protestant parish bulletins. Our press release was published verbatim by our local paper, for which we are so grateful.
About 40 people attended our event. We had a wonderful group of 10 women who helped to plan and help make the event the success it was. We decided that, since we were going back in time, we would use columns and plants to help create an atmosphere of antiquity. Our recorded music coordinator was fantastic, the slides and their technology went off without a glitch, the pianist and cantor were wonderful as were our lectors.
We chose to begin the prayer using spontaneous ringing of hand chimes by eight attendees. Lovely. Then, our cantor sang “Myrrh-bearing Mary” from the “Voices Found” hymnal as a prelude. From there we moved into the prayer service as Robyn wrote it.
We had a half dozen men including our pastor and another priest attending. All who came expressed appreciation for the event and asked for more events like it! A success!
My celebration of St. Mary Magdala was special
this year. I celebrated by going to Mass today
and heard a sermon of substance on the role of
Mary as a courageous and extraordinary person
who was support to the newly founded Christian
community of the 1st century.
The celebration at the Malz Museuum in Cleveland
added substance to the role of Mary of Magdala.
Now, anytime I hear of significant contributions
to spirituality and leadership by a woman, I think Mary of Magdala is present in the energy and solid theology of that woman.
Thank you for all you have done to bring Mary
of Magdala to us at this time in our history.
“Celebrating the Prophetic Witness of Women Religious Today”
St. Mary of Magdala is one of the most misunderstood and maligned women of Church history, yet
she was one of Jesus’ most trusted disciples. The recent Vatican investigation of US communities of
women religious suggests that still today women who seek to proclaim Jesus’ radically inclusive vision can be subject to persecution and misunderstanding.
Over 150 people gathered on July 15th for the FutureChurch’s Cleveland celebration of St. Mary of Magdala. It was held at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage which is hosting the “Women and Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America” exhibit.
Before the program, guests were invited to view the “Women and Spirit” exhibit. Then, at 7pm, the program began with prayer. We listened to the stories of three women religious who have answered the call to ministry. They shared what inspires them to continue, despite obstacles, and their wisdom about advancing the roles of women in the Church today.